LUIZ' BIG LIST OF GAMES TUTORIALS

Intro

This is a curated list of tutorials that will be updated over time. This is very much a work in progress, so send me an message if there's something you feel should be here that isnt. 

It is mainly focused on games development, but a lot of the data is applicable for film and other areas. It is also broken down by specificity, instead of breaking it down by difficulty. As some of these series encompass various levels within themselves.

Update: Updates to this list will be marked with the time stamp and bolded for some time 

Use Cases

Far Cry 5
An Awesome example on how to do large scale world generation while maintaining artist control and design intent. The new go to reference on Houdini Engine usage. 

Modern Combat Versus
Great example on how to use Houdini in a mobile game. The Gameloft team has done some awesome work with rendering out skyboxes and using the Games Development Toolset to bring AAA quality on a mobile game.

Ghost Recon Wildlands
This is a perfect example of how to use Houdini as a tech artist tool. This video shows really well how a small number of people can generate a large amount of content by systematizing open world development

Houdini 16 for Games - Scott Keating 
Scott shows how you can still model in the viewport pretty interactively and have access to your history using the network editor. As well as a nice example of edge wear using the new boolean tools. 

FX Adventures in Uncharted 4 
This is a great article that I reference a lot. It goes through a lot of the Houdini use cases in Uncharted 4, namely destruction, flowmaps and vertex animation. (Note: They didn't use any of the H16 games tools) 

Houdini for Game Dev Webinar with Mike Lyndon 
Another video I reference to all the time. Mike shows a lot of really smart ways of using Houdini in production, like using flowmap data to generate GPU particles vector fields and making low res destruction look higher res with edge decoration. 

Andreas Glad's SideFX Booth Presentation 
This year was pretty amazing at GDC. One of the highlights were Andreas' presentation at the VFX Bootcamp and his accompanying booth talk. Here he shows some tricks he has done for quickly getting simulation meshes out of Houdini for use in game, and a super impressive cloud technique. If you have GDC Vault access his main talk is also highly recommended

Anastasia Opara's SIGGRAPH Presentation 
Really great talk about how humans perceive patterns and how to make procedural assets not look repetitive through the use of layering in details. Some impressive tree modelling and highest level of procedural modelling. 

Luis Garcia's Houdini for Indies 
A one man game studio, Luis shows some of the tools he has built to speed up production on his Indie title. Another great example of what happens when an artist uses Houdini. 

Magnus Larsson's Lava Scene

The first implementation of the Vertex Animation Textures tool, shows how far you can push realtime graphics. 

Entagma at FMX 2017

Really great talk about how to tackle Houdini, motion graphics based, but great examples of problem solving

Getting Started - General Lectures

Houdini Fundamentals Book
New for GDC 2017 is an awesome fundamentals book built by SideFX. Covering a lot of the initial use cases you might want to do, and getting pretty deep into some more advanced examples. 

Gianny's Houdini Training
Gianvito Serra (grayolorin) is one of the most knowledgeable Houdini users out there. He distilled his Texas A&M Class into a series of Youtube videos that are required material for anyone getting started in Houdini

Kim Goossens' Houdini Training 
Kim Goosen used to teach at NHTV in the Netherlands, a school that constantly pumps out amazing Houdini talent. He has put up a pretty extensive list of lectures online that is also required reading. Some of these are starting to get a bit old, but the content still holds up. 

Marc Albrecht's Houdini for Non- Wizards 
Great series for users that already have 3D knowledge, but are new to Houdini. Marc draws parallels between the Houdini and Modo and does a great job explaining the similarities.

Pluralsight (Digital Tutors)
John Moncrief and the rest of pluralsight does a great job explaining core concepts in Houdini. Always great to check back in and watch for newly released content. 

Game Tutors 
Great procedural modelling tutorials that hit some of the common beginner questions. 

Deeper Dives

Horizon Zero Dawn - Rivers and Cables
In depth look at some tools from Guerilla Games. Great if you're looking into modifying terrain with curves, really robust set of tools

Applied Houdini - Steven Knipping
Amazing series from an ILM veteran. If you're looking at using Houdini as an FX artist this is the course to watch. Really in depth breakdowns of how to use all of the different solvers to generate incredibly high quality results. 

80 LVL Article on Terrain Generation
Great read on how Alex Dracott generated the UE4 terrain that was showcased at GDC 2017. Also watch the video of the class where he goes through the network. 

Mike Lyndon's - Herding Rocks - Procedural Animation in Shape Of The World
A great demonstration of how to problem solve in Houdini. Start with a good guess and then iterate until you find the right solution. 

Andreas Glad's Houdini VFX for Games Course

Mandatory watching, awesome course from this former DICE FX Artist. Great Pace and content. 

Anastasia Opara's Lake Houses 
Incredible procedural art done by Anastasia Opara and a great example of what you can get when you have someone with a good artistic sense using Houdini. Full tutorial available at her gumroad page

Procedural Rock Formations for UE4 | Saber Jlassi | Houdini HIVE at SIGGRAPH 2017
Really great talk by Saber on some nice Rock generation using Volumetric workflows. As well as some nice tips on generating fully procedural UVs using clusters. 

Specific Problems

MIX Training: Intro to Houdini Engine in UE4 
Varomix has a ton of content on his youtube channel. In this video he goes through the basics of using the Houdini Engine Plugin for UE4

MIX Training: Particles Following a Curve
Another great video, which I followed myself to learn more about POPs for the Sprite examples. Shows how to do a simple effect where you generate particles from a piece of geometry and make it follow a curve. 

Peter Quint's Vimeo Page
A treasure trove of intermediate/advanced training. Once you get past the beginner content and want to dig your teeth into something more challenging, check this channel out. 

Shameless Self Promotion

Houdini 16 Games Tools Updates | Luiz Kruel and Michael Lyndon | Houdini HIVE at SIGGRAPH 2017

A talk I gave with Mike Lyndon at SIGGRAPH 2017. Covers the latest developments in the shelf tools including Motion Vectors and Games Baker

GDC 2017 Houdini 16 Games Shelf 
This is an overview of the new tools that were created for Houdini 16 in the games shelf. Flowmaps, Normal Map COPs, and Vertex Animation Textures

Houdini For Games Webinar - Vertex Animation Deepdive
Deeper dive in the Vertex Animation workflows where we go from empty scenes into Unreal 4

Unreal 4 Twitch Stream with Luiz 

Overview of lots of different applications of Houdini in UE4. Everything from Photogrammetry pipeline to placing Blueprints with Houdini Engine

Houdini For Tech Artists - CEDEC 2016
Introduction to the (then) new Games Shelf tools in Japan. Covers a bit of the scriptability of Houdini 

GDC 2015 - Proceduralism and Automation at Certain Affinity
GDC Talk I gave back when I was using Houdini in production. Shows a couple of use cases on where we used Houdini to optimize our workflows.

Misc Good Stuff

Matt Estela's Wiki
Famous in the film world, this wiki is a goldmine for people learning Houdini. If you're interested in learning more about VEX, this is where you want to look

Entagma
These videos tend towards the film side of things, so I'll put this under Misc. But the quality of the videos is too good to not bring them up. A couple of them are very much applicable to games. 

Rohan Dalvi's Vimeo 
These also trend towards the film side of things, but there is a lot of great content here. The hard surface modelling video in particular is incredibly impressive! 

Houdini Tricks
Really awesome website with loads of quicktips. Here's where I learn about Shift W and it blew my mind. 

How to Animate a Cube in Houdini
Too good not to post here. Great to put away the fears that Houdini is "too complicated"